“Intelligent, gentle and thoughtful” marine wildlife

While most people find it easy to recognise that domestic animals like dogs and cats are sentient beings — meaning they have feelings and experience emotions such as joy and fear — it can be harder to see those experiences in marine animals.

World Animal Protection talks to Hanli Prinsloo to understand what we know about sentience in the oceans.

What is it about interacting with marine animals that can be so profound?

Marine animals can embody so many different things for each of us. They can be majestic, awe-inspiring, playful, and free. Hanli has an example of an encounter with dolphins that really emphasises how meaningful and profound these interactions can be.

"In February 2020, I went back to Mozambique to free dive with the pods of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins that I've spent over a decade freediving with. On this particular trip, I was seven months pregnant with my little girl."

"I’d read that dolphins, through their echolocation, can see the baby inside you if you’re pregnant while swimming with them. Initially, it felt like a normal dive with these dolphins — and then the second they noticed that I was pregnant, I knew it. They started clicking differently. They started behaving differently."

"They were scanning my belly, they greeted each other and then started making these unusual clicking sounds. Did you know that dolphins name each other? Every dolphin has a unique name. They were naming my little girl inside of me."

"I just cried through that whole dive because it was just such a special moment of being in such a powerful and vulnerable state, being pregnant, surrounded by these incredibly intelligent, gentle and thoughtful creatures."

How has your experience with marine animals influenced your views on animal sentience?

These are animals with memory, compassion, and a love for family. They’re curious about others and have courage and interest in new creatures in their environment.

They interact with us and make eye contact. They can pick up on our moods or vulnerabilities and respond differently to us. That’s the embodiment of the concept of sentience.

Are you concerned about climate change’s effect on the ocean and its sentient wildlife?

Climate change is a challenge we're all going to have to face in our lifetime, and it has intricate and far reaching effects on the ecosystems that we love.

It's affected kelp forests around the world through changing temperatures, coral reefs through ocean acidification, and the movement of animals because of the availability of food. As climate change continues, coral reefs won't be able to withstand ocean fluctuations anymore. 

We'd like to stand on the beach and look out at the ocean and say: “Oh, it's so vast, it's so powerful. Nothing could ever hurt it.” But this is the one thing that truly can.

Can we expect ocean animals to adapt on their own?

One of the challenges of climate change is that a lot of this change will happen in places and in ways that we can't observe. There are already so many things we don't know about the ocean that we’re still learning. 

It’s good to see some of the ways that animals are adapting to climate change and that does offer hope that creatures we love will survive. 

But it’s important that we don’t put too much of the responsibility on them to adapt to the problems that they haven't caused. That's on us. 

How is your foundation, I Am Water Ocean Conservation, supporting marine life?

The point of the I Am Water foundation is to both educate and conserve. In 2010, we were told that donors don’t like organisations that do both. They need to either be supporting conservation or education — but we can't separate conservation and humanity.

The only reason this planet can support human life is because of the oceans. This planet is perfect and a lot of that perfection comes from the ocean. 

We need the ocean for our very survival and the ocean needs our appreciation and understanding. That’s the only way we’re going to change our negative destructive behavior towards it.

What can individuals do to help protect?

There’s so much that individuals can do. We’re not powerless and we need to reconnect with a sense of optimism and hope.

We can decide whether we're going to vote with our wallet on what we buy and how we consume. We can vote with what's on our plate, what we eat and how we prepare it, and how we're part of the food chain. We can decide to use our network to educate ourselves and others. And we can also decide how we're going to treat each other and the animals and nature around us.

Our actions are powerful and we need to approach it one day at a time, making better choices.

It’s so important to remember that we share this planet with so many other sentient beings. In the future, we’re going to understand our humanity, in part, by how we respect and honour animals’ sentience and right to live natural, happy lives.

Join us and make animals' perspectives understood

Recognising the interconnectedness of all life can inspire us to act with greater care and responsibility. For more in-depth insights into our relationship with the natural world, listen to the full podcast and the rest of our Animals Calling series. 

Or, explore the latest campaigns from World Animal Protection and our essential work promoting the welfare of animals across the world.